Improving ToEE's User Interface

6.1 is technically not the latest (since the dev state one I have would be), though it's probably functionally identical. But thinking of this, I think it would be better to post all that stuff here for posterity anyway. It would suck if a few years down the line our descendants wanted to do something with this and couldn't because we didn't document anything.

I think I have fixed this issue by working around it. If the box is the problem ... get rid of the box. Here we see the gang chatting up Ostler's wife, with no bounding box to fudge things up - no text printed over lines, no lines at all, just a black background.



Larger blocks of text work too - they just stack it upward. Still no box to mess it up.



But wait! If the text prints over in-game graphics, you'll see an ugly black box behind it with no artsy bounding lines!

No - because the background is actually now transparent, not black!



Let's step outside and see how this looks on an outdoor map. Furnok is waiting for us ...



Larger blocks still scan fine.



And if you want to see the dialog history, the box reappears. Apparently the history box doesn't suffer from the same issues and scans properly. We could get rid of this in the same fashion as the other boxes if we wanted though.



A few notes on this -

• This would pretty much mean that we don't get cool-looking backgrounds, at least for the dialog window. Personally I don't have a problem with that. I think this transparent approach actually looks really slick and is a vast improvement appearance-wise, particularly in combination with the Priory font.
• If you're worried that the text printed over in-game art isn't clear, it really isn't a problem. All you need to do is shift the screen around if you're having problems reading something (color or contrast issue or whatever). It's hard to show this in static images, but trust me, it's no big deal.
• I had to tweak the disembodied dialog 'head' a bit so it didn't look like it was still hooked to the invisible dialog box. We could probably move that somewhere else if we wanted, although it might intefere with printed text if we do.
• The dialog box is still there and is constraining the text in the same fashion; you just can't see it.
• There are four different dialog boxes ToEE uses: the main for history, and three minis. The three minis are supposed to accomodate different amounts of text in the NPC line. I changed them all, so none of that matters now.

 

Can you post the dialog hover-text .dll code here like you did above, random?

As far as font listings in the .dll go, I see looking at it with a Hex Editor that all the usual supsects are listed in plain English. The code you supplied earlier pointed to some gibberish that was not one of the plain English references. So what I'm getting at is that there are probably references in the .dll that don't control font displays ... maybe they just load fonts for other uses or something. (Hopefully you know more about that than me.) So what I'm ultimately ultimately getting at is that maybe not all font references in the .dll will have to be changed.

I suppose the way to go about this will just be to change stuff piecemeil and see what's left over. To that end I suppose I should post all my changes here so we're all on the same page.

 

:thumbsup:

Well you're gonna have to learn to love it then, because unless you can fix the boxes' dynamic scalability via the .dll, it's either transparent backgrounds or Arial 10 point. I can't fix the boxes conventionally, and I'm frankly not really inclined to try any further when we've got a solution that basically takes care of the whole problem in one fell swoop.

I understand that people have their own opinions and aesthetic points of view, but when it comes to this stuff we have to look at it with a different filter. In this case: Arial 10 point at high resolution is nearly illegible to many players. Priory 12 point with transparent backgrounds fixes the problem. The question should then be "Is it an effective solution," not "Do I like it aesthetically on a personal level." We're not really doing this to please ourselves (for example, I myself don't have trouble reading Arial 10 point at 1680 x 1050), we're doing it to serve the broad player base.

I've seen the transparent background in action and I maintain that it's not difficult to read text overtop of it in-game, and that moving the screen around to improve the view if necessary is not a big deal; people move the screen around all the time anyway.

Having just a black background is unacceptable - it looks amateurish, and we're not going to sacrifice our standards for this. If we can't do it 'professionally,' we won't do it at all.

This is what I've been doing all along. (See all the previous images.) The radial menu will turn to Priory if we change the scrollbar mes file accordingly, once a help menu topic has been clicked on. But then it will turn back to Arial when an inventory tab is clicked. I'm hopeful that the across-the-board .dll changes will fix this.

In what way? If we move it up it will cover the player faces, if we move it down it will cover the HP bar.

I wouldn't recommend that just yet - it's not all entirely copasetic. There's still a wide variety of issues that need to be resolved, mainly with various other UIs, popup text boxes, etc., etc. Hence the one-thing-at-a-time approach here. This whole endeavor will need to be done rather precisely and methodically, given ToEE's vast number of different interfaces.

 

[this started life as an [edit]]

I updated the .dll with all your code, thanks. :thumbsup:

I see what you mean about the dialog boxes now - they seem 'auto-fixed.' That must have been a feature of something in the .dll though, because I've had the mes files changed for like a week already and nothing had changed. At any rate, there is still an issue: in cases where there is what would have been a full box-full of Arial-10 text in the largest 'mini' size dialog window (this is not uncommon in my longwinded NC stuff), the text still goes outside the box on the top. This can be fixed instantly by the transparent background solution, or I will be made miserable for months to come by having to go through all of the too-long dialog and shorten it line-by-line, adding tons of new shorter lines everywhere.

I see - that sounds okay.

As they say at Codex, "Bro," this is what I've been saying all along. There are UIs all over the place that will have to be changed. I noticed like a half dozen just going through the start a new game routine.

This will be doable and well worth the effort, but it's going to take some time and innovation, and I fear that the transparency bugaboo must needs get involved again at some point. :X

Okay, here it is (just the character ui). Extract to data/art/interface.

 

Are you guys really serious about this? And if so, is it the same for all the shots above?

 

It'll actually go on to infinity ... you can put as much text in an NPC's dialog file as you want. The game just stacks it upward (and overtop the bounding box, into the game field, and everywhere else) indefinitely, using the largest mini background once you go beyond a ceratin point. The problem of course is that we've been guaging the dialog text based on Arial 10 all along, not Priory 12, and Priory takes up more space.

I've been through all that stuff quite a bit already and have yet to find a working solution, but if you can, by all means go for it. If there is none, we're left with either me truncating all the over-long lines in the entire dialog folder or going with the transparent background.

One thing is certain: we're going to have to innovate and think outside the box with some of this stuff, because for some things there is no clear solution. As an example, last night I started working on the alignment UI for character creation (the first box that pops up after you select new game). Priory 12 text (for "Chaotic Neutral," etc.) goes outside the alignment buttons, so the boxes have to be enlarged. That's not too terribly hard for the background, but hold on!! - ToEE draws the buttons themselves (select, hover, normal, etc.) into the boxes 'dynamically,' so lengthening the .tgas for them doesn't work. Result: we need to figure something else out (e.g. innovate). But if we're getting hamstrung by people rejecting various resulting forms of innovation due to them not floating their boat personally or worrying over a change to something they're familiar and comfy with (because people are generally afraid of change), this whole project will never really get off the ground. :shrug: (I'm not pointing the finger at you with that; it's moreso a general norm that people tend to embrace.) That would be a shame, because we'd basically be telling all the players who suffer through Arial 10 point to go f*ck themselves just so we can keep wearing our comfy slippers. That's where I'm coming from with the 'big picture' point of view.